"Exactly 52 hours from the extraction of the parts. If everything goes as I have planned" he said, leaning back on the chair and moving the toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other with his tongue. He gave a glance at her and smirked.
"Can you manage that?"

"Our posturings, our imagined self-importance,
the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe,
are challenged by this point of pale light.
Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark.
In our obscurity – in all this vastness – there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves."
- Carl Sagan